The Deep Carbon Observatory:
Transformational Scientific Opportunities
Roadmap for Solid Earth Sciences in Europe
Paris, France
October 2012
Christopher Ballentine, Co-Chair
Deep Energy Directorate
Deep Carbon Observatory
Mission
The primary mission of the Deep
Carbon Observatory is to promote a
transformational understanding of the
physical, chemical and biological roles
of carbon in Earth’s interior.
It is an international, interdisciplinary,
decade-long initiative dedicated to
improving our knowledge of the deep
carbon cycle and achieving a
fundamental understanding of Earth
through carbon.
• A 10-year project launched in Sept. 2009 with funding
from the A. P. Sloan Foundation following an
exploratory study involving 300 researchers
• Foster international cooperation in addressing globalscale questions.
• Engage more than 1,000 researchers from 50
countries, with major new funding for deep carbon
research from international governmental, corporate
and private sources
• Example of proposed scope: Census of Marine Life
www.coml.org ($650 M total; $70 M Sloan support)
Deep Carbon: Science Challenges
• How much carbon is stored in Earth’s deep
interior?
• What are the reservoirs of that carbon?
• How does carbon move among reservoirs?
• Is there a significant carbon flux between
Earth’s deep interior and the surface?
• What is the nature and extent of deep
microbial life?
• Did deep biochemistry play a role in life’s
origins?
• Is there a deep source of hydrocarbons?
We need fundamental advances to
understand Earth’s deep carbon
DCO Directorates
• Deep Life
• Reservoirs & Fluxes
• Deep Energy
• Extreme Physics &
Chemistry
Decadal Goals
1. To improve our understanding of the
physical and chemical behavior of carbon
at extreme conditions found in the deep
interiors of Earth and other planets.
a. Inventory possible C-bearing minerals in the mantle and core.
b. Characterize the physical and thermochemical properties of
those phases at relevant P-T conditions.
c. Develop environmental chambers to access C-bearing
samples in new regimes of P-T under controlled conditions
(e.g., pH, fO2) and with increased sample volumes and
enhanced sample analysis and recovery capabilities.
d. Compile a comprehensive database of thermochemical
properties and speciation of C-O-H-N fluids and phases to
upper mantle P-T conditions.
e. Achieve a fundamental understanding of carbon bonding at
core P-T conditions.
Decadal Goals
2. To identify the principal deep carbon
reservoirs and to assess the total
carbon budget of Earth.
a. Real-time monitoring of volcanic activity & gas emissions
from the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa.
b. Estimate total carbon in Earth’s mantle accurate to within a
factor of two.
c. Estimate rates of carbon sequestration at subduction
zones.
Decadal Goals
3. To document the nature, sources,
and evolution of subsurface organic
molecules, including hydrocarbons
and biomolecules.
a. Develop techniques to resolve the relative roles of biotic
versus abiotic hydrocarbon production, with
experimental investigation of abiotic methane synthesis
under lower crust and upper mantle conditions.
b. Develop techniques to characterize nanoscale organic
molecules from key samples (including the Moho and
Mars), including their compositions, structures, and
isotopic characteristics.
c. Explore the possible roles of subsurface organic
molecules in the origins of life.
d. Investigate the carbon cycle in deep time, including the
coevolution of the geosphere and biosphere.
Decadal Goals
4. To assess the nature and extent of the deep microbial
biosphere.
a. Conduct a global 3-D census of deep microbial life,
presented in an interactive 3-D web-based platform.
b. Explore the extreme P-T limits of life through laboratory
investigation of microbes under deep crustal conditions.
c. Investigate biomolecular adaptations under extreme
conditions.
Physics and Chemistry
DCO Science Directorate CoChairs
• Reservoirs and Fluxes Directorate
Erik Hauri, Carnegie Institution of Washington
Bernard Marty, CRPG-CNRS
• Deep Life Directorate
Isabelle Daniel, Université Claude Bernard Lyon1
Mitch Sogin, Marine Biological Lab, Woods Hole
• Deep Energy Directorate
David Cole, Ohio State University
Chris Ballentine, University of Manchester
• Physics and Chemistry of Carbon Directorate
Giulia Galli, University of California, Davis
Craig Manning, University of California, Los Angeles
Physics and Chemistry
Executive Committee
John Baross Baross, University of Washington, USA
L. Taras Bryndzia, Shell Oil Projects & Technology, USA
David Cole, Ohio State University, USA
Isabelle Daniel, Université Claude Bernard Lyon1, France
Giulia Galli, University of California, Davis, USA
Erik Hauri, Carnegie Institution of Washington, USA
* Robert Hazen, Carnegie Institution of Washington *DCO PI
Russell Hemley, Carnegie Institution of Washington
Claude Jaupart, IPGP, France
Adrian Jones, University College London, United Kingdom
Eiji Ohtani, Tohoku University, Japan
Barbara Sherwood Lollar, University of Toronto, Canada
Nikolai Sobolev, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia
ExOfficio
Jesse Ausubel, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
Craig Schiffries, Deep Carbon Observatory
DCO Website:
http://dco.ciw.edu
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Carbon is Central to Our Lives
• Carbon is the element of life, providing the
chemical backbone for all essential biomolecules.
• Carbon-based fuels supply most of our energy,
while carbon-bearing molecules in the
atmosphere play a major role in climate change.
• Yet in spite of carbon’s importance we remain
largely ignorant of the physical, chemical, and
biological behavior of carbon-bearing systems at
depths of more than a few kilometers.
• Past consideration of the global carbon cycle has
focused primarily on oceans, atmosphere, and
shallow surface environments, with the implicit
understanding that these reservoirs exchange
carbon relatively rapidly as an essentially closed
system.
Carbon is Central to Our Lives
• Our knowledge of the deep interior, which may
contain more than 90% of Earth’s carbon, is
limited.
• We do not know how much carbon is stored in
Earth’s interior, the nature of deep reservoirs, or
how carbon moves from one deep repository to
another.
• We are largely ignorant of the nature and extent
of deep microbial ecosystems, which by some
estimates rival the total surface biomass.